Lehigh struggled at home during non-league play. Its Patriot League opener brought more of the same.

Lehigh played with spunk at the start. It managed a furious finish.

Colgate owned the long middle stretch Wednesday afternoon, negating the Mountain Hawks' good work early and late.

Ethan Jacobs did much of the Raiders' damage during their game-turning stretch. He scored 15 of his game-high 24 points to lead a 21-2 run that started late in the first half and carried into the second.

Lehigh clawed within five points late but ran out of time, falling 68-61 to Colgate in a Patriot League men's basketball opener at Stabler Arena.

The Mountain Hawks dropped to 1-3 on their home floor against Division I teams. Their inability to score efficiently at Stabler has been a trend.

Lehigh shot 38.7 percent from the field Wednesday. That actually boosted its home shooting percentage in Division I games to 35.1 percent. Lehigh has not scored more than 61 points or shot over 40 percent at Stabler against a Division I opponent.

"I don't necessarily have an answer that produces a solution," Lehigh coach Brett Reed said. "I did not think that we shot well against Canisius. I did not think we shot well against Columbia. I did not think we shot well tonight.

"In a few of those cases, we saw a repeat of some of the questionable shots being accentuated by our inability to convert the wide-open shots and shots in the paint."

Lehigh started well, racing out to an 18-9 lead in the game's first 71/2 minutes. It took the Mountain Hawks (6-6 overall, 0-1 Patriot League) 22 minutes to score their next 18 points.

Lehigh certainly didn't have anyone to match the shooting Jacobs provided. He went 9-for-9 from the field, 4-for-4 from 3-point range and made both of his free throws to finish two points off the career high he established Sunday against Columbia.

Damon Sherman-Newsome (12 points) and Matt McMullen (10 points) also scored in double figures for the Raiders. Colgate (4-10, 1-0) finished at 57.8 percent from the field, the best any opponent has shot against the Mountain Hawks this season. Rider was the only one of Lehigh's first 11 opponents to shoot 50 percent from the field.

"We kind of just fell into a lull in that middle part of the game," Lehigh sophomore forward Tim Kempton said. "We kind of fell away from our principles, mostly on the defensive end. We couldn't finish on the offensive end, which didn't help us.

"But we were just letting Colgate get whatever they wanted on the defensive end. They have good players and they made good plays, but we were just too lackadaisical during that stretch of the game."

Colgate suffered through its own lull before surviving. The Raiders led by 23 points with just over 5 minutes to play but saw that lead shrink to five in the final 30 seconds.

Lehigh had the ball with a chance to move even closer, but Kahron Ross (15 points, seven assists, three steals) and Austin Price (seven points, four steals, three assists) both missed 3-pointers. Kempton (14 points, eight rebounds) and freshman reserve Brandon Alston (12 points, all in the second half) joined Ross in double figures, though Kempton finished just 6 of 16 from the field.

Kempton took the blame for his rough-shooting afternoon. Reed needs Kempton and all of the Mountain Hawks to find a way to get on track at home in the weeks ahead.

"Everything I'm seeing right now just points back to us making shots," Kempton said. "I don't know if that's getting in the gym more — we had finals [a couple of weeks ago] — or just putting up more shots in general. If you would go back and look at our game, I don't think you'd find anything that points to taking bad shots or taking rushed shots.

"At times you'll have that, but it's just on us. We're not making shots on our own court, which is unfortunate right now."